


a different kind of country dance

by simplyprologue



Series: no sense in hiding from the front lines [2]
Category: Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff, Future Fic, Period Woman in Scandalous Trousers, Swordfighting, The Sexual Education of Edmund Hewlett
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-22
Updated: 2016-06-23
Packaged: 2018-07-16 14:32:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7272001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplyprologue/pseuds/simplyprologue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Growing up in sleepy backwater Setauket did not lend to many opportunities for dancing. Fighting in a war doesn't either, but it does allow for innuendo and certain lapses in propriety.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. a call to arms

**Author's Note:**

> **A/N:** I meant to write the Super Serious Sequel to _do not hesitate to leap_ first which is less of a sequel and more of a "takes place in that two year time jump I shoehorned in there" but this less-than-serious idea presented itself and wouldn't go away. Initially it was all supposed to be in one chapter, but going from Ben/Caleb/Anna BroT3 to "semi-awkward figuring out of sexual acts and turn ons" in one part felt like a large gap to breech. So anticipate a smut coda. Soon. 
> 
> Many thanks to everyone who left comments and kudos on my first fic!

They first put a sword in her hand so she could pretend that a row of loyalist hedges were Abe’s head in the aftermath of the wedding-that-wasn’t, decimating them with a show of brute strength they did not heretofore know she possessed. There was some innate talent in her composure, as if her hands had been made around the hilt of a sword -- or perhaps it was just the magnitude of her determination to see the end of sculpted arborvitae. 

It was Caleb’s idea that she learn. 

Then came along the practical limitations of women’s clothing as they pertain to physical activity. After all, women were clothed to be homemakers and alewives, regardless of class, with the pursuits of hunting and sporting and warmongering to be left to the men in their bifurcated garments. 

That is to say, Anna comes into possession of spare pair of breeches. 

“You cannot possibly fight in stays.” 

She raises an eyebrow at Ben, rolling and tucking her white stockings under the cream wool of Continental standard. “I can do anything in stays.” 

“Swordfighting requires… agility.” 

“And my breasts and back require support,” she answers blithely, securing the buckles on her shoes. “A woman’s anatomy is its own creation, Benjamin.” 

Blushing, he hands her a spare waistcoat. And thus becomes her uniform for their early morning tutorials -- breeches, stockings, black leather shoes, a man’s linen shirt, stays, and waistcoat. In the winter, gloves. In the summer, hair pinned to her head, but otherwise in a braid that, if one were to glance at her too quickly, might make one believe she were a Continental officer. 

“We should just go ahead and give her a jacket,” Caleb suggests in year into spectating Anna’s martial education; she bests Ben again, landing him on his back on a patch of frozen mud. “Let her lead the garrison for a bit, go south for the winter.” 

“If only it were possible,” Ben mutters, dazed. 

Ben was raised to fight like a gentleman. Anna, being a woman, holds herself to no such constraints. In her hand is an American officer’s brass hilted short saber with a sturdy lion head pommel and cherry grips. With her other hand, she drags Ben to his feet. Dawn is just beginning to break, grey and misty. It is the middle of December, and while winter has not fully furnished itself in New York, it is cold enough that they can see their breath. 

Pink-cheeked and bright-eyed, Anna is ready for another spar. 

And because they are currently quartered in a Patriot home, there are no hedges for her to exert herself on.

Ben sincerely hopes that no one -- and by no one he most emphatically means  _ Caleb  _ \-- will inform General Washington that the hunting sword that he gave him is being habitually bested by a woman who insists on holding a short saber two-handed, if only because her hands are small enough for her to fit them both on the grips. Anna, he thinks, would have made for a good knight of the middle ages. 

“We should have made you do this in skirts,” he sighs, finding his starting stance. 

Anna smiles. “But where would have been the fun in that?” 

“You were never this graceful at assemblies.” 

“A Virginia reel doesn’t call for assaulting your partner.” 

“Maybe with your new partner you’ll be less likely to step on any feet, Annie,” Caleb teases. “Or is Hewlett as hopeless as you are in a dance line? I can’t see Oyster having danced many London seasons with the ladies.” 

“I cannot say,” Anna answers. Circling each other in the yard, she and Ben consider their first strikes. “I’m not knowledgeable of how good he is or isn’t at  _ that  _ sort of dancing.” 

_ “Annie.”  _

Caleb pretends to be aghast. Ben is truly aghast, which allows Anna to advance. Though off-balance, he’s able to parry her initial strike. This being their third or fourth -- depending on which party is asked, but fifth, if you asked Caleb -- round this morning and both having been awake since well before even the cooks and laundresses in camp for propriety’s sake, it is less of an attack but more of a dialogue. Blades kiss and sing, both participants focused on prolonging the duel as long as possible. 

It is a strange life Anna has seized for herself, but she enjoys it immensely. 

She parries, lifting his saber high and away, then jabs for Ben’s shoulder. Evading, he dances on his feet, carrying them further into the yard. He performs his own offensive maneuver, lunging and flipping the blade upwards, wrist supine. Anna jumps backwards, and turns on her toes, spinning herself. 

Caleb claps, providing them a country reel to clash swords to. 

Then slowly increases the beat, laughing until his shoulders shake as they struggle to keep pace to his tempo. 

Anna smiles breathlessly, feeling warm in just her shirtsleeves despite the cold. It’s almost as if she were a girl again, when she and Abby were permitted to run and play with Ben and Caleb and Abe without anyone frowning over if they were too close to being women to be allowed such diversion. In the yard of the Phillipses manor she can pretend that they’re merely children playing at a game of war, not fighting one. That none of their pains have come to pass. She can pretend, at least until the sun breaks the horizon and Reveille sounds. 

“You know, you have your man back. I’m perplexed as to why I continue this with you,” Ben says, grinning as he parries, lunges, parries again. 

“What? Lose?” 

They are possibly getting too close to the house. The Phillipses have vacated to a cousin’s home in Cape May for the time being, but there still is a host of servants and enlisted men and British prisoners to contend with, before taking into consideration the entire garrison camped outside the fence. And sending a saber through a plane glass window is perhaps something to be avoided, especially at an hour where one might assume broken glass to be the signal of an early morning ambush. 

“Well, now you have Hewlett to  _ dance  _ with. You could replace me.” 

Anna’s lips quirk into a lopsided grin. “And unman the very man I intend to take as a husband?” 

“You’re not  _ that  _ good,” he teases. 

“He’s missing toes.” 

Rolling her eyes, Anna charges down the line at him. Ben holds position, then charges her as well. Sweeping her sword up the inside line, she lunges as far as her legs will take her, and carries his blade up over their heads as he moves through and then surpasses the prime striking zone. Turning heel, she tries to attack while he falters and feints hard to the left. 

“Is that all he’s missing?” Ben goads. “Because I’ve heard rumors, I dare say.” 

“Obviously none of the good ones,” she responds, jabbing and then striking upwards, making him stumble backwards to avoid her blade nicking the skin under his chin. “Oh, I apologize, did you already shave this morning?” 

“Beat ‘im, Annie, before it’s too late in day and he gets insufferable.” 

“Trying!” she calls, turning her head back to Caleb. 

Her braid swishes at her waist, his own as become undone. Both are gleaming with sweat, steam rising off their bodies. Anna’s eyes are dark in contrast to her lively complexion, and her sights are set solely on locating what Ben’s weakness is this morning. At first it had been tiredness -- he had not been able to sleep until past midnight. But now she suspects his legs are tired. They continue circling each other, Anna taking the lapse in action to roll her sleeves up to her elbows. 

Then, without warning, she yells and advances. 

“Godammit!” Ben tries to parry, one hand fixing his stocking in his boot. 

Somehow, he manages to trip over his own blade, stumbling as he dodges her first attack. But then her pommel comes down on his shoulder, and he staggers. Darting past him, she hits his buttocks with the flat of her sword. Spluttering out a variety of curses, Ben spins again, losing his balance once more. Thoroughly entertained, Anna at last knocks out the back of his knee, and he collapses into the dirt for the second time that morning. 

Caleb guffaws loudly, then whistles. 

“If the General could see you now.” 

Wiping at her mouth to conceal a giggle, Anna looks back to Caleb for approval as she steps lightly on Ben’s back. “Should I make him concede?” she asks, toes pressed into the hollow between his shoulderblades. “Are you conquered, Benjamin?” 

She expects to see Caleb’s typical grin of mischievous indifference. Instead, he is rioting with silent laughter, eyes on something past her shoulder. Eyebrows knitting together, she looks back, and then hastily regains her composure considering that no propriety may be salvaged.

“Edmund,” she manages to trill out, voice half an octave higher than usual. “Good morning.” 

Under her heel, Ben groans. 

“Please, death come take me now.” 

“Are you quite all right, Major Tallmadge?” Hewlett asks, although his gaze is most decidedly on the lower portion of Anna’s body. Color not related to her exertions rise on her cheeks, though she does not look away. 

She is hardly the first woman to don a pair of breeches. 

“This humiliation was meant to be unseen by enemy eyes,” Caleb offers by way of explanation. 

Closing his eyes and resting his cheek on the frozen grass, Ben asks, “Major Hewlett, if I offered you the opportunity to run for Canada would you forget that you saw this?”

“Ah.” He adjusts his grip on his crutch, leaning his weight more firmly on his uninjured leg. “I am afraid I am in no condition for running, Major Tallmadge. Though for the sake of Anna’s honor as a woman, I am willing to keep silent about your disgrace.”

“ _ My  _ honor?” 

Hewlett meets the offended expression blossoming on Anna’s features with a wry smile. His gaze drops again her to legs, traversing with deliberate slowness up from her ankles to her spry knees to well-shaped thighs to, for a brief moment, her arse. Pursing her lips, she fights off a pleased grin. 

“Mrs. Strong, it is unseemly for a woman of your status to be seen in public like this.” 

“Is that so?” She removes her foot from Ben’s back, allowing him to sit up onto his knees. “Would you prefer a more private exhibition?” 

It is Hewlett’s turn to blush. 

Ben sighs, wiping off a clod of dirt from his face. 

“How’s your bum, there, Benny boy?” Caleb jeers, offering him his hand. 

Scowling, Ben lets go of his hand the moment that he’s on his feet. He sheathes his sword, and with a deep breath, desperately attempts to assume the dignified mantle of an officer of the Continental Army. It’s a poor attempt, and he is rather saved by the bugle call echoing through camp. 

  
  
  


 

Walking back into the house at Edmund’s side, Anna blushes furiously, locking her gaze onto servant’s entrance at the back of the house. His eyes don’t leave her body; her blood heats in her veins. Feeling her chest flush, she unbuttons the top of the waistcoat -- it only makes his not-so-covert glances hotter. 

“I can’t come to breakfast dressed like this,” she demurs. 

“Y-yes,” he stammers. “Yes, of course.” 

Biting her bottom lip, she is oddly powerful. She takes his arm, aiding him up the few steps to the door, perhaps holding him a little more closely than strictly necessary. The uncertain years stretching before them as they await the opportunity to marry entice them to be less proper than they might otherwise be. 

With his recovery progressing daily, the less restrained they are becoming. 

“So… sabers, my dear?” he asks, brushing his fingers up and down her forearm. They linger in the servant’s hallway behind the parlor, the door to the steps up to the bedrooms on the second floor feet away. 

“A healthy avenue for expressing frustration,” she answers. “To prevent me from murdering another spy in our ring.” 

_ So I wouldn’t shoot Abe on sight.  _

Edmund catches her meaning. “Ah.” He looks down at her legs again. “Well, from what I was able to see you are -- quite skilled. Far more than I ever was. I used my cutlass for little more than directing troops.” 

“Perhaps when you leg is healed.” 

“Perhaps.” His fingers slide up under where she’s cuffed her shirtsleeves. 

Swaying in closer to him, she brings their faces within inches of each other. “Though I don’t see why we cannot enjoy the breeches before then.” Then she steps back, pulling her braid to hang over her right shoulder as she ascends the servant’s staircase. 

He watches her every step.


	2. the long island reel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **A/N:** This got explicit. Oh well?

Anna awakes before him most mornings, at least the mornings after nights where she finds a suitable excuse to sleep in the same bed as him. He knows her value to the Continental Army, and is not surprised nor offended that he often awakes alone, her side of the bed mussed but ultimately bereft of her warmth.

And now he knows that some of her mornings have been dedicated to… sword training.

Not that it seems regimented at all. Still, after hearing yelling coming from the yard and getting out of bed to investigate, seeing Anna holding any sort of blade was not one of the outcomes that he anticipated.

Nor was Anna in a pair of breeches.

And a waistcoat.

And a shirt.

Edmund Hewlett is the sort of man who damns and prides himself on his sense of propriety, as subject to it as he considers himself subject to the British crown. Though, it seems, Anna Strong is destined to undo him.

His opinion on women in men’s garments has been changed.

When she descended from her room for breakfast in a gown of blue linen, patting her hair down into a neat bun, he found himself disappointed. She had powdered her skin to hide the red glow of her exercise, and the wisps of brown curls framing her face had been tamed. Were he a more crude man, he’d admit that the clothes hugged to her body in a way he found almost indecent and therefore thrilling, and that the brightness to her eyes and redness of her face and messiness of her hair led his mind to take the reasonable leap to envisioning what she might look like in the throws of conjugal passion.

  
  


 

Candle in hand, she slips from her own room into the upstairs hall. Most in the house are asleep already; the hour is late, the sun long receded past the horizon. Her stocking-clad feet step lightly over the floorboards, aware of the ones that will betray her presence. Edmund’s room is four down and across from hers, and while most nights she cares not a jot who might catch her on her way to _check on the Major before retiring to bed_ tonight might beg more than a simple explanation to whomever may see her out of her room.

Stopping at Edmund’s door, she rapts quietly with the knuckle of her pointer finger, and enters without waiting for a response.

She finds him sitting on the bed, fussing with the dressing on his leg.

When he sees her, he opens his mouth to greet her with some variety of flattering sentiment, but the noise that comes out is more of a surprised grunt than a word. They both color, and Anna presses the backs of her fingers to her mouth as she giggles.

“Edmund, dear…”

“I fear you are trying to take me out while I am still vulnerable.”

She titters, setting the candle down on the table settled between the chairs at the end of the bedroom. “When I could have utilized this method to no further detriment of my sullied reputation in Setauket? I’d have only been confirming what the gossips were saying about me to no further loss… no, my dear, there is no murderous intent tonight.”

She stands in front of him, planting herself between his legs.

Tentative, he places his hands on her waist. “Then what is your intent, love? Because if you will drive me Bedlam or the grave dressed like this…”

His fingers fan outwards over her back, finding nothing separating him from her warm skin but a thin layer of linen. She’s redressed in some of her sparring garments, her stockings and breeches and shirt. Feeling bold, she left her stays hanging over the foot of her bed. The low neck of the shirt hangs open over the valley of her breasts, and even in the candlelight of late evening, there is very little of her chest he can’t see. Whether or not he will be bold enough to touch is a question only he will answer; between his injury and relative inexperience, she has reason to allow him to lead their relationship into these explorations of bodies.

“Oh,” she murmurs. “I wouldn’t want for that.”

Her palms land on his shoulders, and then slide up to his neck. Feeling his pulse leap under her touch, she cards her fingers through his short hair.

“There are other avenues for recourse, Edmund.”

Gently, she leads his head closer to breasts, wondering he is close enough to her skin to smell the rose perfume she dabbed into her decolletage before leaving her room. He flushes to the roots of his hair, despite his encouraged grin. “Right, right.”

At a pace nearing tedious, he gathers her shirt in his hands, tugging the tails out her trousers. Then, moving his hands to the flat of her stomach, pushes the bottom of the shirt upwards, to the bottoms of her breasts. Glancing upwards for permission, he skims his fingertips over the skin he has revealed. Anna wets her bottom lip with her tongue, and nods. Eyes flickering between her face and her skin, he leans in, pressing a single kiss to the area above the waist of her breeches. His lips chart a line from her navel to her sternum, and with trembling hands he cups her breasts in his palms.

Together, they lift her shirt up and over her head and drop it to the floor.

“You’re more beautiful than I could have imagined,” he whispers, his thumbs brushing the sides of dusky pink areolas.

“You imagined me like this?” she teases.

Or attempts to tease him, but her voice won’t cooperate. Her airy alto is lower, raspier as she arches her back, pushing herself into his grasp.

“I did,” he answers, unintentionally budding her nipples under his touch. “Though admittedly my knowledge of these pursuits is limited to a well-read copy of _Fanny Hill_ from my youth and the litany of jokes employed by my garrison in regards to French prostitutes.”

“How did you come into possession of a copy of _Fanny Hill_ is my question.”

“It was my father’s,” he answers, curling his fingers into the skin of her waist. Hesitating for a moment, he leans to to kiss the side of breast. “I stole it from the locked drawer in his desk down at port -- a pirated edition, I suppose. I never admitted to taking it because he would never admit to having a copy to steal in the first place.”

“And where is it now?” Anna asks, fitting her hands over his and pushing them downwards. A bolt of arousal pulses through her, and she aches to feel his touch closer to her center.

“The bottom of a trunk back in Scotland, I would assume. Well-hidden from my mother’s tendency to snoop through other people’s belongings. Why?”

Less certain away from the relative safety of her waist, Hewlett skims his hands over the backs of her thighs and her arse, unwilling to commit to a location to keep his purchase on her. Thoughtfully, he places his mouth over her nipple, and sucks it between his teeth. She gasps, and her reaction is more than he thought it would be, for his hands immediately land on her behind to steady her.

“Oh,” she attempts to answer as he moves to testing the same procedure on her other bud. “I just imagine that it would be an education.”

“I will attest that paper is not as engaging as… flesh.”

“It is not?”

Her knees are quickly liquefying; she has half a mind to praise him for what seems like an innate talent. Perhaps he just has the correct temperament for a lover -- there is a quiet consideration to his actions, a genuine curiosity that Anna thinks stems from his scientific mind, an inclination to gain empirical proof instead of stampeding ahead and rushing things. Has anyone ever been this slow with her? Not on her wedding night, surely. Or during her clandestine romps in the hay with Abe. But Edmund touches her as if she was made from gold, like she were a treasure to be handled with reverence and care.

As if by accident, one of his hands caresses the inside of her thigh.

Moaning, her hips roll forwards, and he looks honestly surprised with himself. “Anna?” She bites her bottom lip, and then takes one of his hands, securely placing it on the buttons fastening her breeches. “Do you -- you want me too--?”

She helps his thumb undo the first of the buttons.

As a boy, he assumed he wouldn’t see so much as his bride’s ankle before their wedding night. This was a period of his life when he held out hope he would be married at a respectable age, so it bothers him less that at forty-three he is revealing his fiance’s most private areas without so much as a second thought. Hewlett is resolved to not place Anna into a shameful position, were she to find herself with child out of wedlock, but he knows that there are other… manners of seeking pleasure in the bedroom.

The breeches join her shirt on the rug.

The first thing he notices is a small mole on the top of her right thigh, and without agenda he kisses it, not anticipating her content mewl or how her hips push into his mouth. His brain must misfire at that moment, because he forgets to consider shame or hesitation or his own inexperience -- he knows what he’s _read_ and blood pounding in his ears, he now knows what he _feels._

His hands hungrily seek out the skin of her thighs, discovering softness he could not have imagined as he kisses his way to her core, scenting her arousal. Her moans sound distant, registering in a heretofore unused locus of his brain. _More, more, more._ Her nails scraping over his scalp make it worse, her hands directing his head to her sex exciting him more than societal convention dictates it should.

In the weeks since their reunion, he’s explored her there with his fingers.

All at her behest, of course, in a way that a man and woman in love cannot spend so many nights abed without falling to _some_ amount of temptation. Anna taught him where to touch and how, make her shiver and tense and sigh when he showed interest.

If _men_ enjoy being on the receiving end of such attentions, he thinks, then why wouldn’t women?

His mouth hovers an inch over her center, his breath warm on flushed skin. Wrangling back a portion of his restraint he looks up at her over the plane of her abdomen, pleased by what he sees -- dark eyes with pupils blown open with lust, mussed hair falling out of its chignon, skin teased to pinks and reds. Clenching his fingers into the backs of her thighs, he realizes he hasn’t so much as kissed her on the mouth yet.

“God, Edmund, please,” she murmurs, widening her feet to a shoulder’s-width apart.

With one hand, he pulls her folds taut, and then licks from her entrance to his thumb pressed over the hooded bead of flesh at the top of her vulva.

The taste of her is exquisite.

He goes back for more.

Anna feels her legs begin to quake. Head rolling back onto her shoulder, she lets Edmund set her body aflame. She tries to stay mindful of his wound, bracing herself against his shoulders and tries to not move as he teases new heights of sensations from her core. But if her knees were liquid before they are dust now, her legs abdicating any responsibility of keeping her upright.

They are both a bit shy about this.

But are ultimately too eager to pay their inhibitions much mind, for she ends up on her back on top of the coverlet, fisting her hands into the sheets as returns his mouth to her arousal. This angle gives him more license to lick and suck, discover what makes her shiver and moan out his name. He draws the sensitive spot nestled at the top of her center into his mouth, making her hips buck upwards.

“Like that?” he asks, voice at a low register that seems to vibrate through her.

Breath hitching in her chest, she nods. “Like that.”

Dipping his head back to her, he continues in his pursuit of her climax. Pleasure exists on the tip of a blade, knifing through her with unanticipated force.

Her legs no longer quite feel attached to her, and she doesn’t know what to do with them. Answering the question, Hewlett eases one of her thighs over his shoulders before pressing the other high and wide, caressing over-sensitized skin with the pads of his fingers. It's somehow more exciting that her stockings are still on, his fingers plucking at the fabric behind the curve of her knee as she squirms and bears down against him. He’s covered in her wetness, but finds no reason to complain. Any amount of discomfort or inconvenience could be surmounted for Anna to continue making the noises she’s making now, an array of moans and cries and whimpers that even his most indecent fantasies could not provide him with.

She reaches her peak suddenly, biting down on her own hand to keep from waking the household.

His kisses soften, transforming from hard and urgent to tender, his tongue sweeping through her sex one last time before he lifts his head. The expression on his face is just as tender, and he presses his lips to the round top of her thigh before climbing up her body to lay beside her. Anna giggles at the keenness on his features, as if he was anticipating a pat on the head or a satisfactory report.

“What?” he asks, confused.

“You.”

Still giggling, she brushes her mouth against his, tasting herself.

Feeling her body returning to rights, she closes her eyes and wonders what _saber_ innuendo she should make use of to see that his attentions are returned in kind. After all, she has always been an advocate of parity.

  
  


 

A thousand raunchy jokes about the services of whores could not have prepared him for the sensation of his dear Anna’s mouth on his erection, Hewlett learns. And it only took him _three_ sword jokes for him to stop asking about her lessons with Major Tallmadge and Lieutenant Brewster and catch onto her true meaning, thank you very much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **A/N:** For those wondering, _Fanny Hill_ was an erotic novel published in England in 1748. Described as "the first original English prose pornography, and the first pornography to use the form of the novel," it is pretty much the originator of PWP. It was at first ignored by the British government, but once they decided to ban it on grounds of obscenity... one can imagine how it became popular for people to try to get their hands on it. I imagine that coming from a mercantile family young Hewlett was able to get his hands on a number of things for academic and not-so-academic knowledge. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! Comments are very much appreciated.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Comments are always appreciated.


End file.
